16 posts tagged “culture”

Most Wellingtonians have seen this Routemaster bus around. I think it’s a promotional vehicle for an English pub here, but it’s a cinch it’s also hired out for TV and film usage when people need to set something in London.

Routemaster bus on Lambton Quay

Chav with money

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Lina Hahne, Fröken Sverige 2007

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[Cross-posted from Lucire] The search for the next Miss Sweden has begun.
   My own affiliation with this pageant—Fröken Sverige to use its name in its native language—began six years ago, and I am happy to say this year I will be far more involved. I will let the publicity machine talk about my role in due course. (I will remain a judge at Miss New Zealand.)
   But for now, let me announce that the pageant is open and accepting entrants. The winner will go on to Miss Universe 2009 at Atlantis Paradise Island, Nassau, in late August.
   After protests grounded the pageant in Sweden some years ago, it was retooled to reflect modern women, though during the past year, Miss Sweden was, according to the organization, a ‘dormant project.’
   It continues, ‘The Board of Directors have spent this time evaluating and collecting impressions and inspiration from around the world—all in order to further develop the concept.
   ‘During this time intensive pressure from various channels and interests have shown that Miss Sweden is missed and more and more people have raised their voices asking that the pageant continue. Just now, when in these somewhat darker times, it is more important than ever to brighten up the world with hope, engagement and all the positives that Miss Sweden represents. We think it is important that we once again place in focus sound role models who create faith in the future and trust in one’s own abilities.’
   The role-model angle is important and it is one I have always borne in mind, ever since I began judging beauty pageants in 2007.
   I have always said to entrants that the interview is ‘80 per cent’. While the points don’t add up that way, judges place a great deal more on the entrant’s intelligence and initiative far more than we are given credit for.
   It may be fairer to say that after an interview, I can usually pick who could win with 80 per cent certainty.
   In New Zealand, interviews can last 20 minutes with each candidate. After speaking with a former Miss Israel, Gal Gadot, who is in the new Fast and Furious film, I understand that she was subjected to eight to ten minutes per judge—and there were eight to ten of them.
   Sweden, too, has a very involved procedure when it comes to interviews—if it didn’t, I doubt that the first winner of the retooled pageant, Josephine Alhanko, would be a young woman with two masters’ degrees with an ambition to get a doctorate.
   For those who wish to be a part of one of pageantry’s most successful competitions, Miss Sweden is now accepting applicants at www.frokensverige.se.
   In the words of my friend, Panos Papadopoulos, the initiator of the pageant and the man behind Panos Emporio, ‘For those who are interested in participating the recruitment of the New Miss Sweden is an adventure that proves that one can conquer the world with the right attitude. New Miss Sweden gives endless possibilities for talented young women to realize their dreams. One year of important and inspirational work awaits. Everyone else can take joy from this fairy-tale of success and be a part of the festivities that surround it.’

If you are around Wellington on Saturday, come along to Queen’s Wharf from 2 to 4 p.m., where Carolyn Enting and I will host New Clothes for the New Year, a celebration of fashion and dance to kick off the Lunar New Year.
   I was thrilled this year that the Asian Events’ Trust’s Stephannie Tims chose my Yan Series 333 typeface for display and supported our company.

AET New Year festival 2009

[Cross-posted] Sonia Yee was kind enough to provide me with a preview of Part Three of her series, The Golden Tide (see earlier post here), which appears on Radio New Zealand National each Sunday at 2.30 p.m. from December 28. I’m thrilled with this episode, which airs January 11: she chose some of my better quotes and discarded my non sequiturs, for which I am very grateful. This is required listening: this is not “a Chinese programme” per se. The musical score is outstanding, as is the post work. It is a commentary about cultural identity, and about what it means to be a New Zealander. In a nation where everyone, including the Māori, can trace their roots to another land, we need to understand issues such as pigeon-holing, marginalization, stereotypes, assimilation and identity.

It’s quite easy to work out the agenda of the mainstream media when it comes to an article like this, trying to harm Samantha Powell’s chances at Miss Universe tomorrow night.

• Personal aggrandizement of the journalist, or, if not the journalist, then the newspaper editors or management trying to look like they can set agenda. (The part about Val Lott hanging up the phone, I understand, is total fiction—so if something so minor is untrue, can we trust the rest?)
• Trying to cause a split between pākehā and Māori when in fact there is none. Fact: the photograph of Samantha Powell doing the pukana was actually published in mid-June—and even ran in a rival newspaper here! There were no complaints from anyone, Māori or any other group, until the Herald made it a race issue yesterday. Or the Herald is trying to play catch-up because it missed the photos a month ago and was desperate for a fresh angle.
• Racism: come on, the headline is clearly poking fun at Māori and the pukana. I don’t appreciate the newspaper doing that, and I would say my Māori friends would be more upset at that than the Herald’s false defence of the haka. Like a newspaper owned by Australians and the Irish really understands Māoridom.
• Implying that two beauty queens are at odds with one another. False. Samantha Powell is in communicado for the most part in Nha Trong, Vietnam, and I severely doubt Miss World New Zealand, Kahurangi Taylor, would risk criticizing another pageant for fear of damaging her own chances when she goes to Miss World.
• Tall-poppy syndrome. (The newspaper failed there: the judges decided their top 15 last week.)
• Lack of patriotism: you would never drag the All Blacks down a peg the day before a big international. And places like Venezuela treat Miss Universe with greater fervour than we treat a rugby match. But an absence of supporting New Zealand is understandable, since The New Zealand Herald is owned by a company listed on the Australian exchange and in turn owned in part by a company based in Dublin. Pity: their business pages are good, so it’s a shame some of these others are dragging them down.

   My views about the appropriateness of Samantha Powell’s haka are at the Lucire blog. I agree that Māori culture should be defended. But you couldn’t really call it a haka. She just did a few moves. It would be like a Caucasian donning a lion mask and moving two metres and calling that a Chinese New Year’s lion dance.
   As I said in Lucire: ‘I know of no Māori who, while rightly guarding against improper use of their culture, would deny a chance for it to be promoted or be rendered so “untouchable” to those who came later to Aotearoa. In fact, one kaumatua I spoke to says it is our duty, regardless of our ethnic origins, to be promoting Māori culture when we are abroad. 
   ‘Sometimes, because we have not been immersed in the culture, we err. It is to be expected. And, when the one who errs is not of our own race, we forgive and we educate, but we do not criticize.
   ‘All New Zealanders should be proud to propagate Māori culture as the alternative would be to ignore it and pretend we are mere facsimile of Great Britain, as many Kiwis did 50 years ago.’
   I’d hate to see us head back to those monocultural times—though it looks like the Herald wants that to happen by running a story like this.
   Since the newspaper has been shifting a lot of its work to Australia, I imagine an Anglicized monoculture makes it easier to take more editing work away from Kiwis.
   Any time you see a story about over-sensitive Māori getting upset about the way the culture has been portrayed, think again about the agenda.
   All the Māori I know put mana first and actually see this as an opportunity to reach out and educate in order to promote their culture. 
   A big fail for the Herald. Sam’s still going to wow the world tomorrow night.

As of today, it appears I am administering the Chinese group on Vox. Sky, who founded the group, has departed from Vox and I am grateful for being left in charge. Thank you, Sky, for this and for instigating the group.
   For those of you who wish to post about China or the Chinese, from Chinese freedom to Chinese pride, please consider joining the group and begin sending your thoughts there.
   I’ve already begun improving a few things about the look and feel (e.g. adding a picture of Dr Sun Yat-sen as the group icon), and welcome others’ contributions.

 
My friend and distant relative May Yan contributed to this new book on Chinese cuisine, called Eating Stories: a Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck. It’s important for those of us in the diaspora not to lose some of our good eating habits and knowledge about traditional cuisine, and to be able to pass them on to the next generation. The way May described this book, it’s the sort of thing that I would regard as vital for my own well-being!

If you could easily choose to live in another country without all the red tape and legal stuff, which one would you select and why? 
Submitted by Matthew 25.

Sweden has always held a fascination for me. It could be a good place to retreat to during the winter here. Culturally, it’s similar enough to New Zealand (e.g. the concept of jantelagen) for me to be understood.

Did you shop for great deals on Black Friday or Cyber Monday? Or did you observe Buy Nothing Day?

Why would there be special deals on Friday the 13th? For Jason masks maybe? And what is Cyber Monday?
   It’s OK: I do know what the original question is about, but there’ll be non-Americans on Vox asking the above.